There’s a method to March Madness rankings, profs say

March 8, 2011 at 4:52 pm

For basketball fans who like to speculate about invitations to the field of 68 before Selection Sunday (and for those who would like some guidance in filling out their brackets Monday) Professor Bob Elder has a few suggestions. Namely, the dominetrics methodology.

Elder and his colleague Scott Beaulier (who taught at Beloit during the 2007-08 academic year) wrote about the method in their February 2011 Journal of Sports Economics paper, “Employing ‘Dominetrics’ to Impose Greater Discipline on Performance Rankings.”

“We found that we were both sports fans, and we decided that this would be a fun project to do,” Elder said. “At the moment, this is the only intersection between my research and my everyday interests, but this project has been a lot of fun, and I'd be happy to do more work that combines sports and economics.”

From this first page of the dominetrics page (housed under the economics department website), click on “basketball rankings” to see the rankings themselves.

Keep up to date with March Madness by visiting the site to see dominetrics rankings updates, to be posted during the week leading up to Selection Sunday as well as on the subsequent Monday. In future seasons, Elder hopes to post weekly dominetrics rankings updates.